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Autonomous vehicle interface system

  • US 9,915,950 B2
  • Filed: 12/31/2014
  • Issued: 03/13/2018
  • Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2013
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. An autonomous vehicle comprising:

  • a plurality of sensors configured to detect conditions in an environment of the autonomous vehicle and generate low-level sensor data indicative of the detected conditions;

    an autonomous vehicle interface system comprising;

    system nodes of the autonomous vehicle that are each a distributed node of the autonomous vehicle interface system, each of the system nodes having processing hardware and memory to independently process the low-level sensor data generated by one or more of the sensors or process high-level system data, the low-level sensor data abstracted to generate the high-level system data as a sensor data type of the respective one or more sensors, the abstracted sensor data type being invariant to specific sensor implementations; and

    at least one on-vehicle real-time bus that connects the system nodes of the autonomous vehicle for data communications of the low-level sensor data and the high-level system data, each of the system nodes configured to publish the low-level sensor data or the high-level system data from a respective system node on the real-time bus, the published low-level sensor data and the high-level system data being exposed to each of the system nodes over the on-vehicle real-time bus for processing and vehicle control of the autonomous vehicle without an acting central managing computer managing the published low-level sensor data and the high-level system data that is exposed to the system nodes; and

    one or more autonomous vehicle control systems configured to control operations of the autonomous vehicle within the environment based on the low-level sensor data and the high-level system data published on the real-time bus.

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